Using Data Driven Performance Marketing For Financial Services
Performance Marketing, Backed By Data
In 2017, digital marketing channels like organic and paid search as well as email and social media are still going strong. But a new marketing trend is on the rise, and from it, so is the revenue. Leading companies have begun to leverage marketing through performance-oriented and affiliate marketing partnerships for acquisition and retention of customers, backed by data.
Keeping Up With The Joneses
Partner marketing has evolved from traditional affiliate marketing by including a much wider array of partner categories (in addition to traditional affiliates) such as ePayments sites and solutions, credit card and loan comparison sites, credit rating sites, content partners, and mobile apps. If your financial services company is not following the trend of expanding your existing performance-based marketing partner programs or planning to utilize them for the first time, you're missing out.
Performance-oriented affiliate marketing programs represent an opportunity for brands to focus their budgets on revenue-generating activities they can easily measure. Already, almost a third of companies spend at least 20% of their overall media budget on these programs. Likewise, the majority of companies have expectations either to increase or expand investments in marketing partnerships and to pay those partners for performance.
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The Pressure To Measure ROI Is On
The financial services industry is realizing that they need a greater adoption of marketing activities with quantifiable ROI. Partner marketing with its built-in performance-oriented methodology of measuring, optimizing, and rewarding partners and affiliates for the revenues they drive for financial services companies is particularly suited to increase revenue from marketing in a measurable way.
75% of representatives responding that the pressure or desire to measure the business impact of each marketing activity has increased, accountability is clearly a priority.
The Perfect Marketing Trifecta
Performance-oriented marketing metrics is a cozy trifecta for financial services, affiliates, and customers. It's a great way to make everyone happy at the same time while still increasing revenue. The financial services companies gain and nurture affiliates that produce continual new customer acquisitions as well as the holy grail of customer retention. And while many organizations are not investing in performance-based marketers yet, and some are only just beginning, the data shows 40% of financial services companies have 20% – 80% of their overall revenue driven through their performance-based marketing partners. Currently, the top 6% are generating 60 – 80% of its overall revenue by this unconventional use of marketing.
The secondary piece of the trifecta is that the marketing partners are directly rewarded for their revenue-driving efforts based on their performance, increasing their marketing efforts.
Completing the trifecta, the customers feel they can trust their financial services companies with these marketing programs to be honest and to keep them safe. How is this done? By the data. One of the most valuable aspects of these marketing partnerships is the wealth of performance data not only resulting in and supporting support high-quality channel oriented attribution, but great visibility, transparency, and fraud protection for all.
Getting Out Of The In-House
Revenue is perhaps the most important metric when determining the effectiveness of performance-based marketing, and the metrics are equally important for making better business decisions as well as producing data needed for government regulation compliance. Leveraging both internal and third-party expertise is an effective strategy for 2017 and beyond.
In order to better evaluate the performance of their marketing programs, 53% of financial services organizations are now using neutral third-party organizations or technologies to calculate the measurements needed. What is usually done in-house due to the complexity of adherence of regulations is enhanced when coupled with the methodologies produced by neutral third-parties. Independent outside help offers the benefits of dedicated, impartial analysis and can provide actionable insights that some financial teams are unable to produce completely in-house.